A CIO Blog with a twist; majority of my peer CIOs talk about the challenges they face with vendors, internal customers, Business folks and when things get through the airwaves, the typical response is "Oh I See". Some of you may disagree with my meanderings and that's okay. It's largely experiential and sometimes a lot of questions

Updated every Monday. Views are personal

Monday, October 24, 2016

The company was on the way to recovery after management change
which decided to renovate the business and bring it back to relevance to new
customers at their terms; products went through a facelift and upgrade to
appeal to the younger generation of consumers. The forgotten sleepy company
thus began their journey into the big bad world of Digital customer engagement,
ecommerce, and compete with the old and new age companies who had already
gained mindshare and market share with a head start.

The new CEO had some success to his credit of having turned
around ailing business; in his no nonsense style he reviewed and made
appropriate changes across various functions inducting fresh talent where
required. As a part of the transformation he also endorsed technology
enablement of company operations which was executed successfully by the new
CIO. Everyone aligned to the vision of the CEO who took decisions swiftly,
leveraging old connections and partners from the industry who had worked with
him.

With aspirations to make a dent in the global market with
digital commerce, he tasked an old friend and known marketing guru with much
acclaimed success of having turned around the fortunes of flagging brands a few
decades back. Bringing him out of semi-retirement, the CEO believed that he
would be successful in the new age too. The old man acquiesced to the request
and used it as a launch pad for his struggling digital practice run by the next
generation; the project was signed off with broadly agreed scope and timelines.

Months passed quickly as they progressed on the journey with
Marketing taking the lead of the new business opportunity. Working with the
vendor and market sales team, the HQ Marketing team created a market communication
plan, collateral, outreach and activation program, while coordinating with
other teams to come together to launch the business. It is then they realized
that integration with the new IT systems was critical to launch and sustain the
new business; so the CIO was inducted into the group.

By this time the initial deadline had already passed and the
CIO was asked to rush through system integration and not delay the launch.
Apologetically he agreed to expedite the task and traveled the extra mile to
understand requirements from the vendor and provide the necessary help. As meetings
progressed, his antennae buzzed that everything was not hunky dory. He dug deep
and wide to realize that they were hurtling towards eventual Armageddon with no
signed off requirements, project plan, and skills of the developers.

Subtle shift of responsibility, the CIO setup project
governance, requested weekly updates that reluctantly started coming as the
second deadline passed. Marketing happily deferred to the CIO to take lead in
fixing the broken and achieve success; the CEO was apprised of the situation and
that the project will slide some more before recovery. Surprisingly, the CEO
accepted the status without too much protestation and asked the CIO to keep him
informed as they progressed; he justified the potential debacle as a calculated
low cost risky experiment.

The CIO intuitively knew that the project will not be able
to deliver to expectation if it continued on its current trajectory. Taking
external help he educated the team about best practices and what can be with
the right set of resources; The CEO unwilling to accept the mistake of having
chosen an incompetent vendor continued to push on; he was unable to go back to
his old friend to shift the project to an alternative vendor. The project thus
continued to flounder for a while, the business losing the opportunity as a
result.

This situation of the CEOs
pet project continues to haunt companies where decisions are taken
based on comfort and past performance even though unrelated; in many cases
convenient scapegoats are found. Almost every CXO steps outside their
competency to demonstrate value addition beyond their roles, many times with detrimental
results. Corporate politics unfortunately does not allow open debate on
these matters; power centers get away with suboptimal designs and strategies
leaving the organization at loss.

It requires strong leadership to accept a mistake and
equally strong leadership to challenge the situation before it gets out of
hand. C level teams rarely get into confrontations preferring to be nice to
each other and loud mouth managers take advantage of this state of affairs. “I am here to be effective and not popular”
was a quip I had heard from one such maverick leader who had taken the company
to new heights. Everyone loved him as he bonded the team together on sustained
success that he brought to the company.

Everything having an embedded computer or chip is vulnerable
to potential attack especially if connected to the Internet. Compromised
software, backdoors, unchanged admin passwords, shared identities, complex
every changing passwords written down on pieces of paper, the number of ways in
which we are being exposed is increasing every day. The information security
bogey is breathing down our neck every minute while we wonder where the next
attack with emerge from to compromise our identity or steal from us.

Every company going Digital is exposing information to the
Internet; strategy varies by company and implementation, but the fact is that
now information is available on servers that are facing the public and thus
will be targeted. IT organizations and vendors tend to live in their
self-proclaimed paradise, smug that they have taken adequate steps to protect
themselves. Most of believe that if there is no evidence of leakage or
compromise, then I am protected and do not need to worry about the changing
threat landscape.

IT departments are under constant pressure to keep the
information assets of the company secure and ensure safety of data residing in
various machines, removable media, data in motion, and also address phishing
attacks on customers using their domains, as well as employees clicking through
on spam. Protect the gullible, irresponsible, and naïve who refuse to learn
from training programs and past mistakes; at the same time provide access to
information on mobiles, via internet cafes, and public wireless hotspots.

All these pieces or combination have to work together to
make the enterprise safe and protect the extended ecosystem and staff. The
information security organization struggles to educate and protect the digital
assets of the company while consumerization of IT keeps creating holes in the
fabric. Everyone wants email access on phones and enterprise apps on the go;
the same phones have all kinds of apps downloaded from public app stores
snooping around; containerization is still new though evolving.

Employees, especially senior management desire flexibility
to additionally access corporate applications from their home computers which
are not under the corporate security programs. Increasing touch points increase
susceptibility; the CISO has to work hard keeping under control the complex
jigsaw which threatens to collapse regularly. Organizations are reaching a
break point wherein they are now working on acceptable risk models rather than
fix every piece that is broken or likely to be threatened. Let some fires burn
!

Most companies live in the perception that targets are
normally the visible and high profile companies rather than the small,
relatively unknown, obscure or insignificant websites and portals. DDOS attacks
are launched only when there is commensurate gain; hacking attempts are made
only on digital assets of value or high visibility. While this may be relative
truth, reality is that no one can afford to be slack in their preparedness or
live in a fool’s paradise that as a low profile non-entity they are safe.

In most large enterprises, security budgets have been
steadily increasing to the point that they are now being managed independent of
IT. Business expects periodic feedback on information asset security and action
being taken by competitors; Boards want answers on risks to business, market,
and reputation in the digital world. The bogey of security is no longer
adequate to get budgets sanctioned, they need clearly outlined business case,
risk profiling, regulatory compliance for some industries, ROI, and connect to
business outcomes.

News of breaches today have become less sensational with
people accepting the fact that some will get compromised while the majority will
stay safe and a few will not disclose. In most cases the root cause analysis
indicates human oversight, error or not following the basics resulted in
successful attacks with majority being internally motivated. Complex and high
tech attacks target (pun not intended) easy pickings on financial and personal
data that can be used for monetary gain, or are orchestrated by state actors.

Don’t let fatigue defeat you, stay awake and alert, the
complex digital world increases dependence on technology and there are no
choices to make !

Monday, October 10, 2016

In the early 90s, the initial days of email it was
fashionable to have a personal tag line at the end of the message over and
above the signature; it used to be a famous quote or a witty one liner that
represented the persona. Unaware of the profoundness of the statement as a
youngster I had the following going for almost 5 years: “My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of
my life there”. I don’t know the source from where I picked it up as it was
before the advent of the browser, contemplating it now feels awkward !

The future is here and how ! We aren’t done with technology
evolution, we keep anticipating new disruptions and welcome them. Technology
disruption over the last century or more started with electricity and then
continued with transportation and electric appliances which change the way we
live and travel today. Today when we think of technology and its power of
disruption we think about the last two decades and the impact they have had on
us and business with disintermediation and customer engagement.

A famous venture capitalist and Angel investor once wrote
about “Why software is eating the world”
which outlines the technology led disruption to almost every industry. Old and
even new economy companies have been threatened by software evolution and
software led disruptions. The concept of software is applied in a broad sense
with computers and related technologies being clubbed. That does not in any way
reduce the impact technology has created across industries as captured by the
author.

Mobile phones have been around for a while now and so have
smartphones; but the newer devices are stretching the limits of compute in our
hands thus providing enterprises new ways of engaging their customers. Be it
services or products, every company wants to use the primary consumer device to
push all kinds of notifications, track locations, access contacts, store
cookies, at times to the extent of becoming a pain; today almost every service
is available via an app and so is every fathomable product.

Multitude of channels bombard the customer from physical to
digital to mobile assaulting the senses through the day and night. Every visit
to a website, an app opened, store visited, mobile wallet used, credit card
swiped, destination searched on maps, every action leaves indelible bread
crumbs which are picked up. For the customer fatigue starts setting in when
gamification offers freebies in return for action once again creating a short
lived surge of activity while everyone catches up to the game with me too
offerings.

Every person has a trigger point, some short where consumers
don’t tolerate anything that is not aligned to their interests; they research
options to shield themselves from the barrage and shut off all possible
triggers they can and broadcast these to their circle to follow suit; activist
behavior marks this segment of consumers who love to be served at their terms
and are cautious of their privacy. They are opinion leaders and shapers who
people listen to and take action because it feels right and good.

However, the majority tend to maintain status quo while being
subjected to all kinds of incitement, and at times irrelevant messages; the
effort to change appears high and thus inertia keeps them going until an
incident – direct or hearsay – provokes them to take action. This segment is
tolerant to being hounded ignoring small indiscretions thereby once again
landing in the same state from where they started. They play the game with
their brands of choice until they become tormentors and fall off grace only to
be replaced by others.

A minor and growing segment plays the game becoming the
protagonist to beat business at their own game. They know how to exploit the
system, get best of deals, hack into models to find value and distribute to
whosoever may be interested. Predominantly millennials who love the technology
connect and take disruptions in their stride. At times they are the source of
ideas that send shivers down established conventional business entities. They are
inventors wanting to change the world and thus lead change in the rules of
engagement !

It is unimportant to enumerate the list of disruptors and
the disrupted across industries, the most talked about being the hospitality,
transportation, photography, music and music distribution, gaming, media and
advertisement, logistics, education, healthcare, the list goes on. Every new
idea gets copied to death threatening the original and at times succeeding in
uprooting the innovator. Customer expectations continue to change as they love
the adulation of the wooers who compete for the same segment.

Monday, October 03, 2016

The company was a pioneer in adoption of technology for a
long time; this was facilitated by a visionary business leader who believed
that IT will make the difference when every other aspect of business had been
copied by competitors. Thus he pushed the enterprise to invest in technology
which none in the industry had deployed; they did not succeed all the time, but
he continued to push on, challenging not just the business team, he also nudged
the IT team to take risks and come up with new opportunities to grow the
business.

As the company grew, so did competition expanding the market
as well as taking advantage of newer technologies. That did not take away the
advantage of process and technology maturity from the early adopter; with new
leaders taking on the primary mantle of business, they however did not pick up
pace that was necessary in the face of new paradigms of business. Leadership
change made decision making shift to lower risk model for new projects and
doing more of what made them successful in the past.

A shift occurred when a new CIO was hired to replace the
exiting IT leader who had lost interest due to change in organization dynamics
and the fact that he had lost connect with the business. With the new came wave
of expectations; he got off the ground running and had the IT team charged up
with his collaborative approach. Business also loved his connect, can-do
attitude and the ability to get things moving; he established credibility with
projects that were deemed difficult and path breaking in the industry.

The project was neither
innovative nor first for the industry, but its scope impacted the entire business
and company reputation. The CIO worked with the business head to present the
case to the management and then the Board. They were given an in-principle
approval but with a low-risk caveat attached to keep investment to the barest
minimum. Even if it does not work, we will not be too much out of pocket. So
the investment schedule was changed along with the solution to adapt to set
expectations.

Since the project required
cross-functional collaboration, they had difficulty in aligning everyone to the
goal which stretched timelines and budget a bit. Coaxing and cajoling the
non-believers, they managed to get off the ground and launched the new
business. Ramp up was slow and steady as business slowly found traction with customers;
the peak during the following festive season broke the process as they faced
the ire of customers and internal teams who were stressed by the additional
workload.

Learning from the
incident, root cause indicated the nonchalant behavior of the unaligned as the
primary reason. The CEO unwilling to acknowledge the failure by the business
team blamed the technology and implementation partner seeking a change to an
alternative solution. With no recourse, the team reluctantly moved on to evaluate
a better system which would help them scale up and also meet expectations; the
caveat remained this time around also, do more with less, we cannot invest too
much.

Usual project travails
and a year later, the new system found light of day; newer technology comes
with new features which were expected to provide better capability to the
business teams. Some of the non-believers converted and joined the wave which
made good addition to their resumes. Since the root cause was not fully
addressed, the next big surge created problems of larger proportions, also
impacting the brand apart from loss of business; the ostrich CEO fired the team
and decided to go to market again for a better solution !

The new team wiser to
history took cautious steps towards selection of the new solution going with
global leaders, unwilling to try any other approach. They patiently waited for
budget approvals and the cross-functional team to be formed that would drive
the project along with the technology team. They chose the best of
implementation partners, collectively turning it into the mother of all
projects for the company. With the large budget the CEO was under pressure to
deliver the project right third time, the Board demanding results.

From the first attempt
to the one now, the gap was close to a decade; competition had risen with the
waves, many had fallen too. Customers had evolved expecting better experience,
service and bargains. Changeover took some effort, the new platform was
deployed with new capability and expectation of higher business. The large
investment rankled somewhere, the Board expecting commensurate returns in a
fast growing market. The business teams continued their other lives while the platform
struggled.